LOBEOTOMIZED:

The Anniversary of a Neo-Imperial Moment (Jim Lobe, September 12, 2002, AlterNet)

When excerpts of the document first appeared in the New York Times in the spring of 1992, it created quite a stir. Sen. Joe Biden, now chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was particularly outraged, calling it a prescription for "literally a Pax Americana," an American empire.

The details contained in the draft of the Defense Planning Guidance(DPG) were indeed startling.

The document argued that the core assumption guiding U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century should be the need to establish permanent U.S. dominance over virtually all of Eurasia.

It envisioned a world in which U.S. military intervention would become "a constant fixture" of the geo-political landscape. "While the U.S. cannot become the world's 'policeman' by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends," wrote the authors, Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby--who at the time were two relatively obscure political appointees in the Pentagon's policy office. [...]

Aside from a strong belief in U.S. military power, advocates of the new paradigm share a number of key attitudes that shape their foreign policy prescriptives. These include a contempt for multilateralism which necessarily denies the "exceptional" nature of the United States; a similar disdain and distrust for Europeans, especially the French; and a conviction that "fundamentalist" Islam poses a major threat to the United States and the West. They also consider China a long-term strategic threat that should be confronted sooner rather than later.

Is the author suggesting that they were wrong? That we don't need to remain a dominant military power? That Europe is useful? That "fundamentalist Islam is not a threat? That China is not a threat?
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 12, 2002 11:48 PM